This is my stop during the blog tour for Flury: Journey of the Snowman by Tony Bertauski. This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours. The blog tour runs from 14 till 27 November, you can view the complete tour schedule here.
So far this series contains 3 books, all books can be read as standalones.
Flury: Journey of the Snowman (Claus #3)by Tony Bertauski
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: November 15, 2014
Blurb:
Life hasn’t been kind to Oliver Toye.
As if juvenile diabetes isn’t enough, he’s forced to live with his tyrannical grandmother in a snow-bound house. He spends his days doing chores and the nights listening to the forest rumble.
But when he discovers the first leather-bound journal, the family secrets begin to surface. The mystery of his great-grandfather’s voyage to the North Pole is revealed. That’s when the snowman appears.
Flury.
Magical and mysterious, the snowman will save Oliver more than once. But when the time comes for Oliver to discover the truth, will he have the courage? When he Flury needs him, will he have the strength? When believing isn’t enough, will he save the snowman from melting away?
Because sometimes even magic needs a little help.
You can find Flury on Goodreads
You can buy Flury here:
- Amazon
Earlier books in this series:
Claus: Legend of the Fat Man (Claus #1)by Tony Bertauski
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: June 19, 2012
Blurb:
Santa is not just about the presents. See something deeper in this mythological figure. A story that’s meaningful. Find a cast of gritty, compassionate and courageous characters that make the journey to mythological fame despite their shortcomings and frailties. Pull away the veil of magic, reveal the difficulties of love and loss and struggle with life.
Because Santa Claus is much more than presents.
In the early 1800s, Nicholas, Jessica and Jon Santa attempt the first human trek to the North Pole and stumble upon an ancient race of people left over from the Ice Age. They are short, fat and hairy. They slide across the ice on scaly soles and carve their homes in the ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean. The elven are adapted to life in the extreme cold. They are as wise as they are ancient.
Their scientific advancements have yielded great inventions -- time-stopping devices and gravitational spheres that build living snowmen and genetically-modified reindeer that leap great distances. They’ve even unlocked the secrets to aging. For 40,000 years, they have lived in peace.
Until now.
An elven known as The Cold One has divided his people. He’s tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The Cold
One and total chaos. He’s white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One. They will come to the aid of a legendary elven
known as… Claus.
You can find Claus on Goodreads
You can buy Claus here:
- Amazon
- Kobo
Jack: The Tale of Frost (Claus #2)by Tony Bertauski
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: October 17, 2013
Blurb:
Sura is sixteen years old when she meets Mr. Frost. He’s very short and very fat and he likes his room very, very cold. Some might say inhumanly cold. His first name isn’t Jack, she’s told. And that’s all she needed to know.
Mr. Frost’s love for Christmas is over-the-top and slightly psychotic. And why not? He’s made billions of dollars off the holiday he invented. Or so he claims. Rumor is he’s an elven, but that’s silly. Elven aren’t real. And if they were, they wouldn’t live in South Carolina. They wouldn’t hide in a tower and go to the basement to make…things.
Nonetheless, Sura will work for this odd little recluse. Frost Plantation is where she’ll meet the love of her life. It’s where she’ll finally feel like she belongs somewhere. And it’s where she’ll meet someone fatter, balder and stranger than Mr. Frost. It’s where she’ll meet Jack.
Jack hates Christmas.
You can find Jack on Goodreads
You can buy Jack here:
- Amazon
- Kobo
Things I Love to Hear My Readers Say
I cried. That's a good one.
Recently, I received a heartfelt email from a reader that said my stories brought her relief in an otherwise hard and dark life (you can read my reaction to it here.) It was a lovely message, and yet heartbreaking. I don't know her or her life, but the fact that my stories connected with her in a meaningful way is the reason I write.
I started writing fiction because I enjoyed the experience. For me, it's similar to reading a good book, except when I'm the writer of the story instead of the reader, it's much more intimate. The characters come to life in a much more personable way. I strive for stories that are entertaining, but also have some deeper meaning, something that will cause the reader to think of things (their life, the world around them) a little differently. And the emotional connection, yes.
I recently worked an event in Charleston, SC called YAllfest. It's a book festival that includes most of today's most famous YA authors (James Dashner, Veronica Roth, etc). The lines were long and anxious, filling the sidewalks for hours. I watched reader after reader come up to Michelle Hodkin and Sarah Dessen with their books clutched to their chests, sometimes their hands shaking, each one in awe of the author that takes them on unforgettable journeys. And all the authors get it, too. They know how special their stories are to these readers. They take the time to recognize their impact on their readers.
My wife asked me if I wanted that to be me one day. I said no, at first. I didn't want that kind of fame. But I did want to share my stories with people on that level. So I guess yes, because writing stories, in my experience, in a vacuum is lonely. The element of sharing them, to put them out there to be loved, to be hated, to be criticized and hailed is as much as part of the experience as sitting at the computer and letting the story unfold.
And if someone says they cried, I say hooray.
About the Author: During the day, I'm a horticulturist. While I've spent much of my career designing landscapes or diagnosing dying plants, I've always been a storyteller. My writing career began with magazine columns, landscape design textbooks, and a gardening column at the Post and Courier (Charleston, SC). However, I've always fancied fiction.
My grandpa never graduated high school. He retired from a steel mill in the mid-70s. He was uneducated, but he was a voracious reader. I remember going through his bookshelves of paperback sci-fi novels, smelling musty old paper, pulling Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov off shelf and promising to bring them back. I was fascinated by robots that could think and act like people. What happened when they died?
I'm a cynical reader. I demand the writer sweep me into his/her story and carry me to the end. I'd rather sail a boat than climb a mountain. That's the sort of stuff I want to write, not the assigned reading we got in school. I want to create stories that kept you up late.
Having a story unfold inside your head is an experience different than reading. You connect with characters in a deeper, more meaningful way. You feel them, empathize with them, cheer for them and even mourn. The challenge is to get the reader to experience the same thing, even if it's only a fraction of what the writer feels. Not so easy.
In 2008, I won the South Carolina Fiction Open with Four Letter Words, a short story inspired by my grandfather and Alzheimer's Disease. My first step as a novelist began when I developed a story to encourage my young son to read. This story became The Socket Greeny Saga. Socket tapped into my lifetime fascination with consciousness and identity, but this character does it from a young adult's struggle with his place in the world.After Socket, I thought I was done with fiction. But then the ideas kept coming, and I kept writing. Most of my work investigates the human condition and the meaning of life, but not in ordinary fashion. About half of my work is Young Adult (Socket Greeny, Claus, Foreverland) because it speaks to that age of indecision and the struggle with identity. But I like to venture into adult fiction (Halfskin, Drayton) so I can cuss. Either way, I like to be entertaining.
And I'm a big fan of plot twists.
You can find and contact Tony here:
- Website
- Blog
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google +
There is a tour wide giveaway for the blog tour of Flury. One winner wins e-copies of all 3 books in the Claus series so far: Claus, Jack and Flury. Each individual blogger also can hold a giveaway for an e-copy of the winner’s choice from Tony Bertauski’s books.
For a chance to win enter the rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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